Cursive on the Coin

Important messages come to us from the past. But to understand them, we must be able to read them.

Letters. Diaries. Manuscripts of various kinds, written in ink on yellowed paper. All were composed by hand, during the Civil War.

A textbook included photographs of some of these manuscripts. Professor Drew Gilpin Faust, an American historian, asked her college class what they thought of the book. One student said the photographs were not very helpful to him, because he couldn’t read cursive.

“What?” the professor said to herself. “Had I heard him correctly?”

Cannot read cursive.

She then asked the class, “Who else can’t read cursive?” About two-thirds of the class raised their hands. “And who can’t write it?” she asked. Even more.

According to The Atlantic, cursive was omitted from Common Core standards for education back in 2010. At that point, handwriting instruction had already been in decline for some time. Laptops and tablets were everywhere, so students began getting lessons in keyboarding. They were using...